Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Farah: Boycott the Military!

Self-declared uber-patriot Joseph Farah is now telling those good red-blooded (as opposed to what?) American Christians to boycott the military and refuse to join as long as President Obama is the commander in chief. Because Jesus would want you to. Or something.

This may sound like a strange idea coming from someone who loves and respects the U.S. military.

It’s time to deny it our sons and daughters and our grandchildren. For those young enough to serve, it’s time to deny it yourselves. It’s time to boycott the U.S. military…

I don’t want to see the best and the brightest of this generation sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East, same-sex marriages at West Point, women in combat, interventionism all over the globe without regard to national security interests or even humanitarian reasons.

It’s time to just say no to Obama playing God with our sons and daughters…

He clearly doesn’t recognize the gravest threats to our country – insolvency and global jihad. In fact, he seems to do everything in his power to foster both.

If a liberal said something like that, Farah would be demanding that he be tried for treason. Of course, he’s not the first one to do this. Paul Weyrich led a coalition of religious right groups back in the mid 90s calling for a boycott of the military because they actually allowed Wiccans and other non-Christians to join. It’s quite amusing watching those who are trying so hard to preserve Christian hegemony act like they’re the persecuted minority.

@1 – you’re missing about 1600 years of Church history. The whole ‘total pacifism’ thing went out of Christian orthodoxy with Augustine, back in the 300s-400s. About the time Christian religious authorities began to try to exert temporal power over states, and thus pacifism became politically inconvenient (if not impossible). But I’m sure those two historical events are just coincidence. There is no way such upstanding theologians would develop their theology to support power politics.

I see it a natural extension of conservative Christians’ irresponsible sense of entitlement while also (subconsciously?) promoting white conservative Christian privilege.

Given their merging with the neocons over the past twelve or so years this initiative, if successful, could cause the neocon ‘chicken hawk’ attribute to take hold within the conservative Christian movement. At the populist base conservative Christians have not historically been chicken hawks. However, by taking on the ‘chicken hawk’ mantle, that would make it far easier to keep conservative Christian sheeple in support of wars if we sacrificed only brown Americans.

We already observed that Republican voters largely supported President Bush’s fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2004 election, where a factor identified during that election was how far removed his voting base was from those suffering and dying at war. So to them it was an abstract partisan squabble with no appreciation of the blood and treasure being expended. If Joe Farah is successful, and I doubt he will be, we shouldn’t be surprised at how this would provide even greater leverage to the neocons to take us into military adventures that would be catastrophic well beyond our country.

Honestly it’s probably for the better if people like this guy stay away from the military. When I get glimpses into the hateful racist wastelands that are their minds it really scares me to think of those guys around innocent Middle Eastern folk.